Stanford women’s swimming opened their season with a second place finish in La Jolla this past weekend at the Triton Invite. Scored across three sessions, the two-day meet took place Oct. 10-11 and featured competitors from UC Berkeley, the University of Hawaii, UC Santa Barbara and host school UC San Diego. 

Starting the meet off strong, freshmen Anna Berlin and Annam Olasewere, junior Lucy Thomas and redshirt-senior Torri Huske won the 200 medley relay (1:36.50) in meet-record time. Thomas and Huske both posted the fastest relay splits of the meet for their respective legs during the event.

Thomas, swimming breaststroke, was the fastest second-leg by half a second, swimming a 26.42. Huske, swimming butterfly, was one of two swimmers to break the 24-second barrier, and the only swimmer to go faster than 23 seconds, doing so in a convincing 22.60. 

Huske, Olasewere, Thomas and senior Gigi Johnson all earned top-eight finishes in the 50 freestyle, with Huske resetting the Triton Invite record from 22.16 (set last year by Berkeley’s Mary-Ambre Moluh) to 22.06. Olasewere, placing third overall, was the fastest freshman in the field, touching in at 22.91. 

Huske (48.34) and Olasewere (50.06), sticking to their sprint expertise, finished first and seventh in the 100 freestyle on the second day of competition. Huske rounded out the sprint freestyle sweep with a win in the 200 distance and a time of 1:44.45. 

In the distance freestyle events, sophomore Bailey O’Regan finished highest for the Cardinal in 17:08.78 to place third in the 1650 yard freestyle, NCAA swimming’s longest event. Senior Sophie Duncan (17:16.08) placed fifth. Seniors Kayla Wilson (4:51.74) and Natalie Mannion (4:55.51) placed highest for Stanford in the 500 distance, finishing eighth and ninth.

As the highest-performing backstroker from Stanford, sophomore Levenia Sim opened her season with two top-four finishes. Sim finished third (54.42) and fourth (1:59.44) in the 100 and 200 distances.

The 200 individual medley (IM) saw sophomore Emily Thompson (2:01.86) and freshman Ella Jablonski (2:02.35) finish fourth and fifth. 

In the 200 butterfly, junior Caroline Bricker (1:57.97) and senior Lucy Bell (1:58.30) finished second and third behind UCSB’s Samantha Banos. In the 100 distance, Bell finished as Stanford’s lone representative in the top eight, placing third with a time of 53.35. Both Bricker and Bell won NCAA titles last year in the 400 IM and the 200 breaststroke, respectively. 

Bricker continued the second day of competition with two more second place finishes in the 400 IM (4:15.26) and the 200 breaststroke (2:13.31). In the latter event, freshman Adalene Robillard joined Bricker on the podium, placing third in 2:14.05. Thomas (1:01.12) and Robillard (1:02.23) finished second and fifth in the 100 breaststroke. 

In the final event of the competition, the quartet of Huske, Olasewere, Johnson and Thomas (1:30.66) fell short by 0.43 seconds to UC Berkeley to finish second in the 200 freestyle relay.

Stanford finished in second place with 898.5 points, short of Cal’s 1,202 points. Torri Huske was the Cardinal’s highest individual scorer with 72 points from her three wins in the sprint freestyle events. 

The Cardinal will return to Avery Aquatic Center on Oct. 24 to face off against Arizona State University and UC Berkeley.